Two actors share one-man shows at Cider Mill Stage in Endicott

Before winning his first Tony Award, "Angels in America" star Andrew Garfield said outside the ceremony that theater "has to be political." Co-star Nathan Lane called his character in the play, Roy Cohn, "Dr. Frankenstein to the monster we have in the White House." (June 10)
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For those of us who aren’t actors (and maybe even some who are), the idea of doing a one-person show is a scary prospect.

You're onstage alone, recalling pages and pages of monologue with no one but yourself to rely on. If you get off-track or skip something important by mistake, you’re on your own.

“In a regular play, you have to hold on to you for a minute or two, and then give the attention to someone else,” actor Chris Nickerson said in an interview last week. “When it’s all you, you have to be able to let go enough to do it but also know that you can’t completely relax, because there’s nobody holding you up if you drop the ball.”

The challenges are what make it thrilling to perform, and to watch. Audiences will get the chance to see Nickerson and fellow actor Jake Wentlent walk that high-wire at Cider Mill Stage in Endicott when “One Act / One Actor” opens on Thursday night.

The production features Wentlent performing Will Eno’s “Thom Pain (Based on Nothing)” and Nickerson returning to Neil LaBute’s “Wrecks,” which he has previously done for the Readers Theatre in Ithaca and Half-Light Theatre in Binghamton.

In “Thom Pain” — which has drawn comparisons to the absurdist writings of Samuel Beckett — the eponymous narrator riffs on ideas of fear, childhood traumas, failed romance and loss of innocence, all while breaking down the fourth wall between performer and audience.

“I loved it the first time I read it,” Wentlent said. “I would have to read a page, put it down and think, ‘What did that say?’ Then I’d pick it back up and read that same page again. It took me forever to get through the play the first few times, but it was so incredibly doable.”

“Wrecks” centers on loving father, successful businessman and grieving widower Edward Carr, who faces a crisis of conscience at his wife’s wake about a secret he kept from her for 30 years.

Nickerson is thrilled to be revisiting LaBute’s journey into the dark side of human nature.

“The images are becoming part of who I am,” he said. “I’m finding stronger images so I don’t even have to act — I can just speak and they’re attached to things I feel, without them having to create them. I’m really excited about the chance to do it again.”

Wentlent — who also starred as Brick in the last Cider Mill production, Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” — appreciates the collaborations and compromises that other productions require, but also loves how he’s solely responsible for how “Thom Pain” turns out.

“What was so exciting was getting to have my hands on the entire thing, as opposed to the sometimes-contentious ideas you can have with others for what the piece is about,” he said. “There’s some relaxing fun in getting to be in charge.”

He also thinks that being the sole performer taps into something primal: “The one-man show is the closest thing we have to the old art of storytelling. Everything else is stripped away — a story is being told by one person. There’s something very comfortable to that in me.”

Deb Ward holds a t-shirt up to Jacob Shipman for sizing at the carousel gift shop in Eldridge Park as his mother Jessica Van Slyke and his younger brother Camden Shipman look on after the family rode the carousel on June 29, 2018. Kate Collins / Staff photo